Splinter's children
by Saluzozette
Summary: My name is Splinter, I am sixty-seven years old, and I saw each of my children die. The last one has just close his eyes in my arm, and I do not understand why I'm still breathing.


**Hi, everybody ! This is my first time on the english fandom as a writer. I read a lot of fiction because there are only few of them in my own langage. Now, I want to try to write as well, I hope it will not be to hard for you to read.**

**Don't be nice with me, I want to improve my writting skills so I need you to point every single mistakes I make. Enjoy your reading =)**

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My name is Splinter, I am sixty-seven years old, and I saw each of my children die. The last one has just close his eyes in my arm, and I do not understand why I'm still breathing.

I had five children. A daughter first, then four sons. And if I had the great joy of educating my boys, see my only daughter grown was a forbidden wish for me. She was only one and a half year old when my enemy, the Shredder, took her after having killed my wife, making me believed she was also dead. I refunded her sixteen years later, soon after my sons' fifteenth birthday. She was seventeen and had become a beautiful and merciless warrior. Convinced by the Shredder that I was the one who killed her mother, her only idea when she learns about me was to kill me. But my sons were on her way. They had no idea who they were fighting, and she would have been horrified to learn that the creatures she was trying to eliminate was in fact her brothers.

Throughout the three long years they were fighting each other without knowing their identities, each of them could have died one hundred times. And me, afraid of what they could think if I told them the truth, I kept the secret. My sons finely find out by themselves and had very different kind of reaction. Leonardo, the eldest, and Michelangelo, the youngest, forgave me immediately. The first one because he could not accept the idea that I was not perfect, and the second one because he was too happy to learn he had a sister, even if she was his greatest enemy. But Raphael and Donatello did not take the news that well. The idea that he could have killed my daughter so many times (I do not think the fact that she was his sister was really important to him then) horrified my red mask's son so much that he almost completely stopped to speak with us, suddenly obsessed by the need to rally Karai to our side. And then was Donatello, who did not hate anything more than lies, and had only given some words during on long year to make me feel guilty. How could have I blame their attitudes?

Raphael has been the first of my children to fall because if Leonardo and Donatello needed some longer time to accept their sister and forgive her everything she ever did against us, my two other sons immediately try to conquer her. They did not want to fight her and risk to killed her anymore. They did not stop telling her that the Shredder was not her true father during two full years but she refused to listen. I think that with the time, she went to understand that it was the truth, but she could not accept it.

It is only two months before his twenty-first birthday, on night that he was out with Michelangelo that Raphael found his death. Knowing that they were going to try to convince Karaï again, Leonardo and Donatello had not followed them. Despite their rancor against my daughter, I guess that they trusted her enough, as well as their brothers, to not kill each other. They were wrong.

I am still convince that everything which happen that night was the result of a huge mistake. As Michelangelo was the only one to see the scene but always refused to tell anything about it, no one knows for sure what happens then. The only clear thing is that after more than five hours of absence, Leonardo and Donatello went on the search of their brothers. They found them on a roof, one dead and the other in chock. Michelangelo did not have any wound, but refused to get up and was not reacting to anything. Twenty feet away, Raphael was lying in a sea of blood, Karaï's sword deeply planted in his stomach.

It took one month to Michelangelo to speak again and he had never been the same. He talked only when it was necessary and started to become increasingly Raphael-like. And if Donatello buried himself in studies even more than before, Leonardo seemed to decide that revenge was the only right thing to do. Karaï had cross his limits from far away, and nothing I could tell him had any effect.

But three other years passed before another of my children dies, and it was not my daughter. To tell the truth, I imagined a very different end for my eldest son. Something tragical, but grandiose. Leonardo himself would have preferred die with his weapons in his hands after having killed Karaï, but destiny is an unpredictable thing. During a really rough winter, searching madly for his brother's murder without only noticing the temperature, he found himself stuck by the snow in a small sewer section. When his brothers succeeded in clearing the way, four days later, he was dead since a long time.

Michelangelo changed again. If he did not return to his old himself, he suddenly realized that he had only one brother left, and that he refused to lose him. My two youngest sons became closer than ever and we went through a period of peace almost happy. Almost because the eldest's shadows followed us everywhere and that somewhere, out there, Karaï was steel alone. Michelangelo did not want to have any businesses with her anymore, but still could not see her without reminds her who was her true father. Donatello, weirdly, suddenly seemed to regret his lake of attention about her and tried to convince her as well. Personally, I could not afford to hate my own blood, but still could not forget what she had done to our family. It seemed impossible to accept her, but impossible to reject her. Finely, we did not have to choose.

I was losing hope that my daughter will one day join us, but just after hey twenty-ninth birthday, six years exactly after she killed Raphael, she surrendered. She stayed in the lair a whole year before we trust her enough to let her fight by our side, and two years more after that. She had only two opportunities to face the Shredder, and she meets her faith at the second one, even if she succeeds in defeating him. She used so much rage to destroy de the one who had ruined her life that she destroyed herself in the processes. From first to last, I have known my daughter only four years and a half over thirty-two.

The Shredder defeated, we could finally live in peace, my two remaining sons and me. They were thirty and started to live for real. But the happiness was not there because our missing ones' presence was too strong. At least we had not to fight anymore. It is during those few years that we noticed what was happening to Michelangelo and Donatello's bodies. Their flexibility and their rapidity decreased, their sight reduced and the youngest started to lose his hearing as well. Despite Donatello's tests, no one was able to say what was happening to them. Finally, aged of thirty-four, Michelangelo had a first hearth attack. His brother managed to save him, but after the third in eight months, four years ago, my youngest son succumbed.

And now, I am here, next to Donatello who has just dies as well, and I do not understand what killed him. He tried to explain but… He was only thirty-eight! Is it an age to agonize in a bed? It is the obsession that killed Raphael, the hatred Leonardo. The hatred killed Karaï as well, while it is his own heart which had betrayed Michelangelo. But Donatello?

"And you? What is killing you, my son? I whispered yesterday, holding his unmoving fingers in my hand. Why are you dying?"

I thought he was sleeping so I blenched when he answered. His voice sounded tired, but a hint of malice could be heard.

"One day, when we were fifteen, Mikey told me something… We were doing a role play game and I won because my character was the only one left. Leo and Raph get angry and left, but Mikey laugh and told me that I was going to be the last of us to die. He thought he would be the first to pass away because he was always goofing around. He said that Raph would be the next one, trying to avenge him and that Leonardo would follow because he would feel to guilty about their death. "But you, you will not get killed so easily" he said. "A smart guy like you will only die when he will decide to." He hadn't expect us to live so long… He hadn't included Karaï in his calculation."

"Your brother could be really farseeing when he wanted." I answered, painfully.

A long silence followed before he spoke again with a really soft voice:

"I'm a turtle, Master Splinter. Despite the mutation, our genome is still the same as before, like yours is still a human genome. I did some research, you know? We were "Hieroglyphe" turtles. Thirty centimeters more or less, life average: thirty-five years. Do you understand?"

As I shook my head weakly, refusing to listen what he was saying to me, he tried again:

"Thirty-five years, Master. I'm thirty-eight now. In human age, it would be eighty-nine. Technically, I'm older than you. It's not a disease who is killing me, only my old age."

"I am old!" I interrupted. "You are not."

"My mind isn't, you're right" he admitted. "I could have lived much longer before it gets tired. But my body is not following."

I do not want to understand. I know that my stubbornness surprised Donatello who never saw me act like this, but I just could not accept what he was trying to explain.

He died tonight, while his hand was still in mine. I do not know exactly when he gives up because it is his skin's temperature that woke me up this morning. He was already gone since hours then.

My name is Splinter, I am sixty-seven years old and I saw all my children die. I must have prepared myself because now I do not know what to do. I do not know what is the point of living anymore.

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**So, give my your advices and your opinion about this OS please =) Did you enjoyed it ? Or was it really impossible to read ?**

**Thanks for reading anyway !**

**Saluz**


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